The National Stadium, commonly known as the "Bird's Nest", and the National Swimming Pool, commonly known as the "Water Cube"

The "Bird's Nest" is a most masculine thing, a magnificent and peculiar Bird's Nest-style building. , entirely constructed of giant steel frames, expresses the strength and majesty of the male; the "Water Cube" is a soft and yin thing, expressing the feminine beauty of water. The "Water Cube" is a square shape, which corresponds to the circular shape of the "Bird's Nest", constituting the ideal state of "round sky and square earth" in traditional Chinese culture. They live next to each other, one on the left and the other on the right. They look like a perfectly matched pair made in heaven, a pair of extremely loving "couples".

Ranked among the top ten latest buildings in the world

Recently, the foreign architectural community has a ranking of the top ten latest buildings in the world, among which my country's three major buildings are impressively listed: First, the "Bird's Nest" "; the second is the "Water Cube"; the third is the new building of CCTV.

The shapes of the "Bird's Nest" and the "Water Cube" are unique in the world, and both are world-famous for their unique beauty.

The design of the National Stadium was produced through a global design bidding competition. The main body of the design is composed of a series of rotating radial steel structures, which resembles the cracks of Chinese porcelain and the shape of the "Bird's Nest". Named "Bird's Nest". The unique appearance is both architecturally beautiful and practical. A bird's nest shape that is not completely sealed can not only allow natural air circulation, but also protect spectators and athletes from wind and rain, which fully embodies the people-oriented idea.

The colors of the "Bird's Nest" will be beautiful at night. Although the color of the "Bird's Nest" you see now is steel gray, the "Bird's Nest" after completion will be red under the light at night. This is mainly because after completion, there will be a red glass wall inside the Bird's Nest, which will appear a fiery red in the night scene. Red represents the enthusiasm of the Chinese people and the people of Beijing for the Olympics.

Ding Gong told me that the charm of the "Bird's Nest" is not only in its appearance, but the greater shock can only be felt when entering the stadium. First, the stands are very wide and have a good view at any angle; second, the top of the stadium is relatively thick, which adds a lot of space for functional changes to the stadium.

The beauty of the "Bird's Nest" is not only reflected in its unique design and beautiful colors, but also in its majestic masculine beauty. The "Bird's Nest" uses 100,000 tons of steel, has a construction area of ??258,000 square meters, and has 91,000 seats. It may be the largest environmentally friendly stadium in the world.

The "Water Cube" was originally a common and extremely ordinary box-shaped building, but because its appearance is entirely constructed of a blue building material "membrane", many blue bubbles make it " "Water Cube" becomes crystal clear and extremely beautiful. From the beginning, the design plan focused on elements such as water, happiness, and energy saving, and considered how to express the idea of ??"water." But the differences between Eastern and Western cultures soon became apparent. Most foreign designers have come up with impactful designs such as waves and curves. However, the three Chinese designers each came up with a flat-top shape. Foreigners asked them, why do all three of them have flat roof designs? They said that their designs express a kind of yin-yang contrast and implicitness, which is a dialogue between Mohism and Taoism in traditional Chinese culture.

The "Water Cube" is the only one among the Beijing Olympic venues that was built with donations from compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and overseas Chinese. It expresses the unifying desire of Chinese people around the world to participate in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The perfect combination of technology and art

Beijing highlights the "three major concepts" in the construction of Olympic venues, which are reflected in building energy conservation, environmental and ecological protection, sustainable utilization of resources, We will implement the "Green Olympics" focusing on green and environmentally friendly building materials, and implement the "Technological Olympics" focusing on scientific and technological research, the application and demonstration of the four new technologies, and high-tech information services. We will implement the "Green Olympics" from the aspects of cultural relic protection, architectural cultural concepts, and cultural landscape construction. Providing people with a comfortable environment and services will focus on implementing the "Humanities Olympics".

The construction of the "Bird's Nest" and "Water Cube" not only fully considers its artistic beauty and people-oriented concepts from the humanistic level, but also fully applies the achievements of modern high-tech, so that technology and art are perfectly combined, fully Reflecting the concepts of "Technology Olympics" and "Green Olympics".

During the design and construction process of the "Bird's Nest", there was a major environmental protection project, which was the application of scrap steel slag. During the construction of the Beijing National Stadium, advanced steel slag backfilling technology was used to counterweight and prevent floating, and 82,000 tons of scrap steel slag was purchased. This not only created good social and economic benefits, but also opened up a new way to solve the steel slag treatment problem that has troubled people for many years. way.

During the construction of the "Bird's Nest", the "Black Mountain" that originally stood on the bank of the Yongding River at Marco Polo Bridge is constantly getting smaller. This Black Mountain was formed after 40 years of accumulation by Shougang. It is a steel slag mountain that stretches for 1 kilometer, is 35 meters high, and weighs more than 3 million tons in total. With the promotion of this scrap steel utilization technology, the environmental pollution caused by the accumulation of scrap slag generated by Shougang's steelmaking will be completely controlled and bring huge wealth to Shougang.

The new long-span steel structure of the "Bird's Nest" is difficult and demanding in terms of design, material selection, processing and installation. What is gratifying is that after technical research by scientific researchers, all the steel used in the project has been domestically produced.

For example, the "Bird's Nest" uses a high-strength steel - the 110 mm thick Bird's Nest special steel Q460EZ35, which combines strength and flexibility to ensure that the Bird's Nest can still return to its original shape after withstanding an external force of up to 460 MPa. . This means that if Beijing is once again hit by an earthquake like the Tangshan earthquake in the 1960s, the Bird's Nest will still remain in its original shape and will not be afraid of a magnitude 8 earthquake.

The "Water Cube" has a "world first in technology": the use of polytetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) facades in the world's largest, most complex structure, and most comprehensive technology construction project Assembly system. This material is lightweight, has high transmittance, is highly resistant to pollution, can be easily replaced after its useful life, and can withstand natural disasters such as hail.